Grade the episode...

Excellent

Above Average

Average

Below Average

Poor

The Hippocratic Oath only applies to Jack's patients. If Jack had been helping Juliet and then they discovered the more serious problem he would have been bound to help. But there is nothing in the oath that compels Jack to help a random person. And as others have pointed out, the Oath didn't seem to stop Jack from putting Ben's life in danger to help Kate before.

Above average . . . but just barely. This and last week's episodes were both in the above average category but they've been slipping a bit. Enjoyable but not outstanding.

I was actually rooting for young Ben to die. Why? Because it would've been an interesting monkey wrench to throw into the works. As it was, we got pretty much what was expected. Ben is saved (presumably by the island) but in the process becomes the Ben that we know. *Yawn*. The drama of operating on him and trying to get him to the others was all for nought. He wasn't going to die. A twist here would've been nice.

The flashbacks were just OK. Not many revelations.

On 2nd thought, maybe I should've given this one an average. Oh well, a charity rating then.

The Kate/Aaron stuff made no sense in the context of Kate's scene with Jack in "316". If it was as simple as Kate deciding that she had to leave Aaron with Claire's mother, while she goes to search for Claire, why didn't she just tell Jack that? Why doesn't she tell everyone that? Why say "Don't ever ask me about Aaron again", which surely must freak Jack out? Doesn't Jack deserve to know that Aaron is OK?

I think the writers are too in love with the idea of turning everything into a mystery, even when doing so is uncalled for, and defies all logic.

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316 annoyed me because it was so obvious that they were just purposely setting up these mini-mysteries of how everyone ended up on the Ajira 316 flight to fill up time in next 5 episodes or whatever, and none of them are proving to be particularly interesting. The only one I'm sure any of us really care about is why Ben is bloodied and beaten up at the marina, did he try to and succeed in killing Penny?

And yeah, I agree with you about Jack. They looked like they were just going to have sex, but seriously, Jack lived with Aaron for a couple of years, right? He knows Aaron is his blood relative. I wanted him to stop Kate from kissing him and just say "No wait, seriously, what happened to the kid?" It just reeked of setting up some little thing we'd learn about a few episodes down the line, and then when we finally do find out it was just so....meh and makes you kind of think less of the characters involved. Like seriously, that's the big deal?

The thing with Jack was interesting I think not because he was 'letting Ben die' it was more Locke-ish, in that he sort of had some faith that the Island would make things work out.

I also liked Kate's reason, it was a much stronger reason than 'she went for Sawyer'. I hope they move her more in that direction and away from Sawyer/Juliet. It's sort of insulting I think that her character is just a sexual ping-pong for Jack and Sawyer.

I also found Kate's story about what happened to Aaron and why she went back a bit of a let down. Wasn't very traumatic or mysterious.

I liked the time travel discussion between Miles and Hurley a lot, they should have been having this talk from the beginning not just now.

What Jack did and what Sayyid did created evil Ben? They also gave him a convenient excuse as to why he didn't remember any of them. Wasn't very surprised the ew website said Jack refuses to help Ben. But evil little Ben returns to them at some point doesn't he, so he can kill them all.

I don't think she's redeemed, I think she's as annoying as ever... Incidentally does anyone think that when Aaron went missing in the grocery with that strange woman, that the woman was really one of Ben's people?

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I think that the strange woman was actually Claire,just older due to some time travel tom-foolery. She looked to be in her 50's which if the "plane crash Claire" winds up also back in the late 70's would make her age about right.

"Left Behind" is my favorite Kate episode, I just saw it yesterday on Sci-Fi Channel. You got Kate and Juliet paired together running around in the jungle and fighting Cerebus. BAM! And we learn that the purpose of the Sonic Fence is to keep out Cerebus. It was also the episode that linked Kate's backstory to Sawyer's with Cassidy.

The Hippocratic Oath only applies to Jack's patients. If Jack had been helping Juliet and then they discovered the more serious problem he would have been bound to help. But there is nothing in the oath that compels Jack to help a random person. And as others have pointed out, the Oath didn't seem to stop Jack from putting Ben's life in danger to help Kate before.

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Interesting turn of events though.

If Jack had helped young Ben, he wouldn't have gone to the Others to become who he is today.

"Left Behind" is my favorite Kate episode, I just saw it yesterday on Sci-Fi Channel. You got Kate and Juliet paired together running around in the jungle and fighting Cerebus. BAM! And we learn that the purpose of the Sonic Fence is to keep out Cerebus. It was also the episode that linked Kate's backstory to Sawyer's with Cassidy.

Mrs Hawking! From the Church Of Pendulum Based Island Finding. She was also the blond lass on the island (1953 segment) in Jughead.

That's right....I think....

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I knew she was the chick from back in time, but I didn't make the connection to Hawking. Good catch there.

BTW, I will say this about Ben. His Dad's asshole-ness led him to hate the Dharma Initiative and support the Hostiles. If it weren't for that, he wouldn't have busted out Sayid and gotten shot. It wasn't entirely Jack and Sayid's fault.

If Jack had helped young Ben, he wouldn't have gone to the Others to become who he is today.

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Not necessarily. If Jack had agreed to helped with Ben then the timeline would have self-corrected and events would have still played out more or less the same.

Example: Jack agrees to help, but on the way to the infirmary he trips on a rock, smacks his head on (insert random object) and is knocked unconscious for a long period of time. Events play out the same as if he had not agreed to help.

Not the best example, but you get the point. Jack is not to blame. Sayid is not to blame. Whatever happened, happened.

Some things I didn't even really think about. Like if Locke was the proxy for Christian, instead of Christian dying from an alcohol bender, could he have actually been murdered like Locke was by Ben? Good article though. You guys should take a gander.

Filler? We find out why Ben is the way he is, clear up what happened to Aron, actually move Kate's character in an interesting direction and give her an actual purpose and resolve an important character point from last season's finale and you call that filler?

Definitely a high Above Average on the Lost scale, but if it was the "Everything else" scale, it would be Excellent.

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An important character point? What a big twist giving Aaron to his grandmother was! Who didn't see that one coming? Anyone?

Ok...who didn't see Ben getting saved by The Others? *crickets*

This episode was so obvious it was boring. I did however like the time travel discussion between Hurley and Miles and we got some good character stuff for Kate (although she is still as dumb as ever).

So it sounds like Widmore and Hawking are both still on the Island in 1977. So, then have Faraday and Penny been born yet? Are they living on the Island, as toddlers or something?

In "Jeremy Bentham", Widmore indicates that Ben exiled him from the Island. I've wondered how this squares with Penny having presumably grown up in the outside world. As far as we know, Penny has never indicated to Desmond that she had ever been to the Island, or knew anything about it before he got shipwrecked there. So is she hiding this from him? Or did she leave the Island when she was too young to remember? Or did Widmore go back and forth between the Island and the outside world, and he fathered her when he was in the outside world?

Actually, maybe Penny *does* remember being on the Island, and is hiding it from Desmond, for whatever reason. At the end of "Live Together, Die Alone", those guys in that arctic station report to her that they've found the anomaly, which indicates that they've detected the Island. But how does Penny know what to look for, in trying to locate the Island? She's never explained this to Desmond, or any other character, has she?